This course will provide learners with a systematic general framework for analyzing persuasive influence situations. Learners will be able to identify different challenges faced by persuaders and to fashion appropriate strategies for addressing those challenges. The broad goal is to provide learners with not only an extensive persuasion tool kit, but also with an understanding of how different tools are useful in different situations. Specifically, the course will address four broad topics: strategies for influencing people’s personal attitudes; strategies for affecting social factors influencing behavior; strategies for affecting people’s perceived ability to undertake the desired behavior; and strategies for inducing people to act on their existing intentions.

TT

Common sense is not so common. Simply put, these principles are so relevant to everyday life, and yet they elude us. Vital tool to develop communication tactics every leader must master.

LS

Feb 22, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Great course. I learned so much about influence and how it is manifest in the workplace. I also got skills in how to use influence to get ideas accepted and moved forward.

De la lección

Influencing Attitudes

This module discusses the first of four challenges that persuaders often face: getting people to think that what you’re proposing is a good idea. Sometimes, the reason people aren’t already doing what you want is that they’re not yet convinced that they should—that is, they don’t have sufficiently positive attitudes. This module discusses some fundamental strategies for changing people’s attitudes.

Impartido por:

Daniel J. O’Keefe

Owen L. Coon Professor

Transcripción

[MUSIC] When people aren't doing what you want, there can be all sorts of different reasons and correspondingly different challenges that a persuader has to address. One common challenge is simply that people don't think that what you're suggesting is a good idea, they don't have positive attitudes toward it. So the question is, how can you persuade people to have positive attitudes about some action, actions of any sort, adopting a business proposal, buying a consumer product, adopting a public policy program, engaging in some health behavior, whatever? Well, one obvious avenue is you make arguments. You make arguments supporting what you're advocating. You try to give people good reasons why they should favor the thing you want, why they should follow the course of action you're advocating. Persuaders do this all the time. They make arguments. And you might not have noticed, but there's one kind of argument they usually make. And they make this one kind of argument. No matter what the topic is, no matter what the subject matter is, they can be arguing for how to organize a business' workflow. Or for wearing sunscreen. Or for adopting some particular economic policy. Or for which car their family should buy. Doesn't matter, they overwhelmingly make the same kind of argument. It's an argument about the consequences of the advocated action, the outcomes associated with it. So, if we organize our workflow this way we'll become more efficient. That's the consequence, the outcome. Or if you wear sunscreen, your risk of skin cancer is lower. Consequence, outcome. If we adopt this national economic policy, economic growth will increase. Consequence. Overwhelmingly, when people make arguments for a course of action, the arguments they make are arguments based on consequences. Now, of course, there are all sorts of variations here in exactly how these arguments are expressed. For example, sometimes the argument is phrased not in terms of the consequences of doing the advocated action. But rather in terms of the consequences of not doing it. If you don't wear your seatbelt, your chances of serious injury increase. That is, negative outcomes of not doing the advocated action. Notice that putting it the other way, if you wear your seatbelt, your chances of serious injury are reduced. That makes basically the same point. The same substantive idea. It's just a matter of positive consequences from doing or negative consequences from not doing. It's all consequences underneath. And sometimes, these arguments are not literally expressed in terms of consequences. Even though consequences are in fact involved. For example, and ad for a car might say, this car gets great gas mileage. Now literally, that's just a statement about the characteristic of the car. But obviously underneath, this also is a consequence-based argument, because the idea is that if you buy the car, the consequence is you'll have a car that gets good mileage. Okay, when people are trying to justify a course of action, they overwhelmingly turn to arguments based on consequences. And there's a good reason for that. Consequences, outcomes, are a natural source of good reasons for doing something. They are a natural source of justifications for actions. So the question is, when you make arguments from consequences, what can you do to maximize their persuasiveness? As a place to start in sorting out answers to that question, notice that these consequence-based arguments are conditionals. That is, they are if/then arguments. They have an antecedent, the if part. And they have a consequent, the then part. The consequent, the outcome, the consequence, is conditional on the antecedent. If you do X, then this outcome happens. Now, as just mentioned, a consequences argument can be phrased either as positive consequences of doing the advocated action. Or as negative consequences of not doing the advocated action. You can talk about the same basic consequence either way. If you floss regularly, your risk of gum disease is lower. Or if you don't floss regularly, your risk of gum disease is higher. Same basic consequence. The antecedent, the if part, is different. Turns out that this variation, this variation in the antecedent, does not make much difference to persuasiveness. Phrasing arguments in terms of the good consequences of doing the action. And phrasing them in terms of parallel bad consequences of not doing the action. Pretty much equally persuasive either way. So the way you express the antecedent, the if part, does not make much difference. But what you say in the consequent, the then part, that matters. And that's the subject we turn to in the next segment. [MUSIC]